1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for breaking emulsions of an organic composition and water or a polar fluid, and is particularly useful in the treatment of waste fluids.
2. Prior Art
One of the major problems facing cities, chemical manufacturers, and industries using various chemicals, is waste disposal. More particularly, cities and industries are often faced with the disposal of emulsions of organic contaminants. Typically, these are aqueous emulsions; however, there exists waste fluids which are emulsions of organic contaminants and polar fluids. In many of these operations, the disposal of water containing the contaminant substances is a problem. Regulations make it impossible to simply dump such waste water into streams, even if such method of disposal were desirable. Various methods have been proposed for removing such contaminants from waste water, but they have been relatively expensive or inefficient. Therefore, the removal of the contaminants from aqueous solutions, and in particular from waste water containing small amounts, is a problem which has not been completely solved.
It is often desirable to dispose of such waste fluids by reducing the volume of the fluid. When emulsions exist, this is often difficult to do, because prior to reducing the volume of the waste fluid, it is necessary to break the emulsion. Indeed, while it is often desirable to incinerate emulsions to dispose of them, such a process is normally very expensive due to the water present in the emulsion. This problem may be eliminated by breaking the emulsion to remove the water. Once the volume of the waste fluid is reduced, various means may be utilized to dispose of the remaining waste such as incineration or see, for example, assignee's co-pending application, U.S. Ser. No. 415,423, filed on Sept. 7, 1982, and entitled "Method of Immobilizing Organic Contaminants and Non-Flowable Matrix Produced Therefrom." This co-pending application relates to a method for treating waste fluids containing organic contaminants to solidify them in order to facilitate disposal. Prior to such solidification, however, it is desirable in some instances where emulsions are present, to reduce the volume of such fluid by breaking the emulsion and removing a portion of the water (or polar fluid) contained therein.
There exists numerous methods for breaking emulsions, typically oil and water emulsions. See for example the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,367,384 to Tymstra; 2,937,142 to Rios; 3,196,619 to Shock; 3,487,928 to Canevari; 3,528,284 to Skoglund et al; 3,986,953 to Beaucaire; 4,231,866 to Moser et al; and 4,279,756 to Weiss et al.
More specifically, Tymstra describes a method for removing small quantities of water-immiscible organic oily impurities from water. The method consists of contacting the oily composition with an inert solid coated with a cation surface-active bonding agent. The solid employed may be beach sand, mud flat deposits, silt, clay, limestone, silica, rice hulls, etc. The cationic surface-active bonding agent may be quaternary ammonium, phosphonium, arsonium, or primary, secondary, or tertiary organic amines or salts thereof. This reference does not teach or suggest the use of the specific organoclays utilized herein to break emulsions, nor the unexpected efficiencies of these clays in breaking emulsions.
Rios separates phenolic substances from aqueous solutions by contacting the aqueous solution with a clay adsorbent. The clay is previously treated by depositing carbonaceous material thereon, and then subjecting it to combustion regeneration to burn off the carbonaceous material.
Canevari separates droplets of oil from an aqueous phase, using a mixture comprising a sodium montmorillonite clay and an organic cationic agent or glycol. The organic cationic agent is preferably an amine. The mixture is applied as a flocculating clarifying solution containing from 1 to 5% of clay to water, and an effective amount of the organic cationic agent or glycol.
Beaucaire describes breaking an oil-water emulsion with waste-pickling acid solution, and thereafter converting the iron ions present in the waste-pickling solution to magnetite particles which absorb the oil. The magnetite particles and oil absorbed thereon are separated from the solution leaving a clarified solution.
Moser et al separates organic and aqueous phases by treatment of the emulsions with diatomaceous earth at an elevated temperature.
Weiss et al describes the use of a finely divided particulate mineral or clay material, the individual particles of which have been treated to produce a thin hydroxylated surface layer having a positive zeta potential at the adsorption pH.
None of the aforementioned references teach or suggest the use of organoclays to break emulsions of organic compositions and water or polar fluids.
Additionally, organoclays are well-known in the art, see for example the following U.S. Pat. Nos.: 2,531,427 to Hauser; 2,966,506 to Jordan; 3,422,185 to Kuritzkef; 3,974,125 to Oswald; 4,081,496 to Finlayson; and 4,105,578 to Finlayson et al.
None of these aforementioned references teach or suggest the use of these organoclays to break emulsions of organic compositions and water or polar fluids.